The Bootstrapper's Bargain
inc.com
inc.com
Sounds interesting. Not many of us could do that w/o previous success(s).
> We started in one person's apartment with the understanding we'd get an office in six months. Six months became a year, a year became 18 months, five people became six people...and the guy living there finally said, "Obviously, you guys are not leaving my apartment, so I am." That let us turn the bedroom into our conference room.
Haha, thats hilarious. I wonder how much more productive it would have been to have a more comfortable situation?
EDIT: Care to share why the downvote?
Or other outside support (parents, spouse).
Caveat: I'm in the UK. Things may be different the other side of the pond (and may vary by state).
http://romero.smugmug.com/Video-Games/The-Archives/480_GtbLP...
The rag-tag office setup is pretty inspiring.
As long as you don't need to have frequent visitors, aren't making tons of noise, and generally make it look like your apartment isn't a makeshift office, I'd probably be more worried about my landlord finding out than the zoning commission.
Is commercial office space substantially more expensive than residential? I could see using a space you're living in as an office, but if the original tenant moved out because the office was infringing on his space/life, is it cheaper to maintain the residential apartment as an office or find proper office space?
Too many laws in too many places. [I know I won't consider the UK now :->]
EDIT: I have heard about this zoning concept, it's just a bad idea IMHO, especially when applied to the modern tech workers. In France, unless you run specific equipment (say heavy machinery) which can create nuisance or risk for the neighbours, or if receive the public (wear and tear being a nuisance in itself), you're quite free. Zoning as in simcity (residential/industry/commercial) is a dated concept. I want to leave near the place I work and where I can find commerces.
In France, there are even special corporate statuses for single entrepreneurs, which especially allow you to do that in case your landlord may tick, and even deduct part of your home expanses as business expanses (say if you are using a room of your 4 bedroom flat, 15% would be reasonable because you'll still use the bathroom and the kitchen more for yourself that for your company, the % amount is left to the appreciation of the tax agents)
That's one of the rare business friendly laws, even if I must say I've been quite surprised by the recent Hollande plan, which for the first time seems to talk sense about business and employment.
6 people in an apartment sized for 4 may be a nuisance.
"Commercial" activity generally refers to customer traffic, not personal work.
2 bd w/ living room apartments were cheaper than office space across the street.
With wife, 3 kids, house etc, taking no salary for year is frankly pretty impossible.
Not sure why I am getting downvoted here? I am voicing my perspective.
Though of course if you have dependents it's different. Could be either harder, if you are the main money earner, or easier, if your wife makes enough that you can stop getting salary without sacrificing much.
"Most entrepreneurs think of the VC as their customer, but when your survival is based on the VC, you build a company on what the VC will like and not what your real customers like."
A VC-backed business often has the wrong priorities from the get go, which is why bootstrapping is really attractive because you live and die by building a product people want to use.
As a bootstrap lover, this is awesome even though critics can question this especially since they are a backup company.
The OP's point was a confidence issue, and not necessarily that there was a better option that could have been taken.
Interesting point. Come to think of it, online backup services have existed for a long time, I remember using a similar service at a previous job 6+ years ago. I recall that it was quite expensive and certainly not unlimited. I seems clear that Backblaze was able to get to $10 million revenue by competing on price - dirt cheap pricing. And the dirt cheap pricing was made possible by not paying salaries, running a "data center" in an employee's apartment, building servers from ultra low cost hardware components, violating residential zoning laws, oversubscribing storage capacity, etc. One can only wonder what kind of sacrifices were made in terms of physical and network security. I wonder how many of their first customers realized that their backups were sitting in someone's apartment ... somehow I doubt it was disclosed at the time?
The problem with this kind of business model is that it is effectively a small business owner mindset. $10 million revenue after 6 years of toiling away ... at $5 per month, this means that they have something like 2 million users ... considering all the other backup solutions available (including far more secure solutions), it seems quite possible that their growth will stall or slow down as their target market is going to be relatively small and already saturated and you can't go much lower than $5 a month to continue competing on price alone. Incidentally, I noticed that their website actually says "as low as $3.96 per month" ... so they are continuing to push the limit on price. I'm not sure that a price war / race to zero is the optimal strategy for this business ... this is like trying market the world's cheapest helmet or life vest - how many people would seriously want that?